Oh, we worked out how to do that years ago, even with alignment rules. One of the supplements, the one that has all the details about illithid culture and lifecycle, says that they're terrified of the undead.

"Well, ma'am, the bad news is you've got mindflayers. Good news is, I can clear that nest right out for ya, I've just gotta bring Aunt Hattie back for a few hours to do it."

The illithid fear of undead in 2E stemmed from the fact that the undead were invisible to infravision. Mind flayers avoided bright light back then, so the undead had an easy time ambushing them most of the time.

I never understood that oath. Is it supposed to be a subtle atheist joke ("By something that does not exist!") or are we implying that Celestia has a fake relationship going in order to conceal her real preference? All the shots of her with cake are designed to keep people from guessing her favourite food is veal or something?

I don't know. I saw This hilarious comic portraying Celestia with a beard and I laughed so hard that I just accept it.
I'll be honest though, including the post above I've only used that oat like... twice. :)

The one I still use regularly is "For the love of Luna's left hoof". Likely because I made it up. :D

I've seen a few fanfics that pick items of apparel (horseshoes, socks) or that take a similar approach that you did and pick body parts (fetlocks, in this case).

I think it's partly humour of swearing on something that's objectively pretty insignificant, partly humour of swearing on something that's down right silly (the beard), and partly an in-universe attempt to subvert a strong oath ("by Celestia") with a milder one ("by Celestia's (insert garment here)").

I've gotten in the habit of doing something similar IRL, by adding "...Nappa" to the end of the usual cursing when hardware or software becomes sufficiently frustrating.

In related news, it's surprising just how many bystanders _do_ recognize the "God dammit, Nappa" reference.

Also, "By Celestia's Beard" is the title of a short but amusing fanfic.

I think it is more a reference to other oath's that go "by [insert deity here]'s beard". Saying "by Celestia beard" is suppose to be a reference to that made amusing by the fact she doesn't have one. So an oath they find amusing to utter. I never thought it had any other meaning, though I could be not putting enough thought into it.

in one of my books i have a Lawful Good Necromancer, he ises his powers to revive the dead so they can get justice as he can hear the whispers of the dead. Some even are so thankful they let him summon them again to help him in a fight...of couse in the same series i had the forces of evil desicrate a graveyard for thier big battle and the entire place rises up to fight them along side the heroes...
Yup i had Rita Repulsa and Goldar fighting Hidiacs teamed up with Light Speed Rescue (if you like power ranger refferences)

In a D&D game, the Necromancer I played was granted the honorary alignment of Chaotic ***hole.

He hacked off the Captain of the Guard's hand.. cast animate dead on it... stabbed a dagger through said hand and nailed it to the door of the town Mayor's home. One quick invisibility spell later, (and a few paper towels for the Mt. Dew the GM snorfed)... and the hand began to knock. Every time the Mayor opened the door, it stopped. Close the door.. wait five minutes.. and it'd start knocking again.

oh he uses Animate dead but only because they ASK, though the stigma gets to him and he eventually gives it up and becomes a Lawful God Pyromancer I'm always reminded of this one scene i wrote where the Big Bad has been using mind control and drugs to turn several female heroes into were-cat baby makers so he can raise a army of loyal were beasts. The first since to rescue them fails but eventually everyone catches up to the Big Bad in his nursery who then uses his powers to suck the life force out of 2 dozen furry infants to curb stomp the team. The Necromancer counters as he almost passes out

---------------------------
Connie, Way, Burn, and Purple seemed to be the most phased by whatever was happening…each one shuddering a moment along with the Colonel. From the two dozen plus cribs an orb of light rose, hovering a moment in the air before moving with the speed of thunder to spread out and strike each hero. One by one the heroes crumpled to the ground, passing into darkness. The energy lifting from Purple to reveal a girl in spandex not unlike Pink and Burn, though the color was obviously different and where as the helmet visor of Burn and Pink was that of night Purples visor was the color of blood.

“Oh?” Raven said mockingly, choking his head to the side to look at Burn Warden, “Why is that?”

“Because the dead do not like it, and the dead demand retribution.”

Raven laughs, unlike before this is a laugh of joy, oblivious to the small furry hands reaching up from the cribs around him. “Oh? And what are they demanding, exactly? What do I have to fear of the dead?”

There was a click and Burn’s helmet snapped open, clattering to the ground unceremoniously, the face revealed was not even old enough to drink, but the eyes, the eyes sent a chill through the core of Zion. “If you stare into the abyss long enough the Abyss learns all your secrets.”

Raven was paralyzed, unable to break contact with those eyes, he did not understand how or why but he was afraid as well, truly afraid. And then he noticed the children, crawling from the cribs to cling to his body like leaches, this bodies cold like ice, hard as steel and their eyes, their eyes were white and pale, the eyes of the dead.

Burn smirked as he slowly flicked his wrist, “See you in Hell…Corpse Explosion.”

I have made a lawful neutral necromancer who is doing necromancy FOR SCIENCE and so she can find a cheaper way to fully resurrect. It did not help that I made this character a drow... I still had to go on long tangents for my backstory and make sure all the townsfolk who I experriment on sign wavers. Fortunately my lifespan allows for waiting.

If you have problems with alignment, eliminate it entirely (like I often do). 4e is even worse about it because fewer alignments means even more polarization, and no lawful evil or chaotic good has unfortunate implications about tyranny.

I'm currently running a campaign where the players are navigating a precarious political dispute between a lawful neutral tyrant and a well-inentioned but dangerously destructive group of chaotic neutral extremist rebels. Throwing out law-chaos while keeping good-evil would make this nearly impossible.

Actually, in my group, there's a much stronger argument to remove the good-evil axis. Good and evil are almost entirely relative, depending on motivation, intention, and repercussion. Law and chaos, however, are far more absolute. You can argue whether it's wrong or right to kill a murderer for days on end, but it's easy to distinguish between a "just-my-job" assassin and a cackling psychopath.

One option I've seen used is to replaces "Alignments" with "Allegiances". It applies to the help our guys/hurt their guys based on the Allegiances either matching or conflicting, most of the "Detect (Alignment)" stuff gets turfed.

For instance, before the FiD campaign started, a Moon Cultist might have Allegiances to "Nightmare Moon" and "Dark Coast Smugglers". Since "Nightmare Moon" is clearly an opposed Allegiance to "Celestia" she could use her smite ability on a royal guard, (and vice versa), but probably not on a random farmer who has no allegiance beyond Celestia being the ruler. (Some abilities may work only based on 'divine' Allegiances. e.g. Smite only considers gods/faiths/etc., it ignores nations/groups/etc.)

One interesting thing that can come up is the possibility of two characters having Allegiances that both match and conflict. For instance, our cultist could have "Equestria" as an Allegiance, which would be considered to be aligned with "Celestia", (which relationship applies would depend on what's going on[1]).

Another thing it brings about is how things can change when, well, things change: Luna's return shifts the alignments from having "Nightmare Moon" and "Luna" as allies opposing "Celestia" to "Celestia" and "Luna" being allied and "Luna" now either opposed or neutral to "Nightmare Moon"[2].

And yes: It's quite possible for an adventuring party to qualify as an Allegiance.

[1] She's raiding the palace to steal an artifact? "Nightmare"/"Celestia" She's involved in a strike against infiltrating changelings? "Equestria"/"Celestia"

[2] Or to make things really sticky: Luna is now allied to both Nightmare and Celestia. The latter as part of Luna's redemption and return to grace, the former as it is still an aspect of Luna and those with that allegiance follow her. Over time this may evolve, possibly with "Nightmare Moon" splitting into "Primacy of Luna" and "The Nightmare Itself".

Party is tracking down a vampire in a castle. The castle belongs to the surrounding town and a contract outlining the PC's fee for slaying the vampire was verbally drawn and handshake'd on.

While in the castle, the party Monk attempts to take a suit of full plate as a "finder's fee" because of the value. Looting the castle wasn't part of the deal, but the monk argues that verbal contracts can't be legally enforced while the fighter argues that it would be against personal code to break one's word.

An hour later I (the DM) told everyone to shut up and roll initiative, you woke up the dead with your argument (and no that wasn't hyperbole in their case).

I don't see how removing Law/Chaos will fix this. That was an issue with player greed. Unless they don't have the courage to try something like that when they can't hide behind "I'm just playing my alignment." then that issue will continue for as long as their desire for gold. In fact money tends to be very good at sidestepping moral issues altogether.

A simple reminder that if they take a stock check and find missing inventory then the next bounty the town might post is for the party's heads might've done the trick.

Not getting any Flak was confused for Not getting any flank. In this case not getting any flak means no one is calling her out on her behavior. Not getting any flank is another way of not getting any tail.
As for Rainbow Dash not being called out I can kind of see why. Sure she does what she pleases and can be a jerk at times. But she's not an active member of a law-breaking organization like Rarity.

Ha. Ok. So our DM sent us up against a Hydra. He had to step out and make an important phone call. At the time, I was the only other person experienced with the rules, so he asked me if I could run the combat while he was out.

Suddenly, everyone knew exactly what the monster's defenses were. And all of a sudden, critical hits were everywhere.

(To be fair, that Hydra was WAY above our level. He literally just flipped pages in the monster manual until he found a monster he liked. A level 13 Hydra is not appropriate for level 6 characters.)

Generally, however, we tend to discuss the internal psyche of our characters at the time in the story, to better plan actions and reactions coming up.

I read this and immediately thought "wait a tic, hydras can range in CR from 5 to 13 before you apply templates, having a CR 13 hydra would be stupid since the exact same creature exists as CR 6, 7, and 8, reasonable encounters"...

Regardless of version, though, I say shame upon you for throwing the fight. Losing fights isn't that popular in WoW: The Pen and Paper (which some people like to call "4th ed"), but a losing battle used to be a staple of D&D: It taught the players they were NOT all-powerful, and are very useful for character development. It added an element of risk, reinforced that "Game Over" was a possible outcome, and made the game more fun for the possibility of losing.

Having nearly died twice in 4e, I can tell you from experience that you're not totally unkillable in 4e, and a very poor tactical decision or a poorly built character can still cause character death. I only survived because the rest of the party made damn sure I did.

Being level 14 in a Pathfinder campaign, I can say with confidence that you aren't immortal/unkillable.

The mechanics change at mid-level and above, but the net result isn't less risk - it's a narrower margin between "cake walk" and "party wipe".

If the DM misjudges an encounter, or the players pick the wrong strategy or happen to have the wrong spells or equipment (or just not all of the _right_ spells or equipment) for a given fight, they're toast. Even a couple of bad rolls can toast them.

I still consider that a flaw of the system (you have less creative leeway if you Must Do Exactly X Or Die), but from the sounds of things the Pathfinder campaign you were in had either too much loot or insufficiently challenging/smart monster encounters for the characters' power level.

Core rules only (or with extra books only as explicitly approved by the DM). You can find game-breaking combinations in supplements for just about any system if you look hard enough (and if the system has been around for a while).

2e was especially bad for that, though from the sounds of things 3e is catching up. 4e will get there in due time, don't worry.

I had two DMs average two TPKs a season in Encounters. I had one bending over backward in an an attempt to avoid wiping his table last season before accepting it was out of his hands. Another table perished in the finale, as did another group in the finale of the previous season, in which only one out of four tables saw everyone get through alive.

I once had a group curb-stomp its way across a 2nd level encounter right up until I rolled an unexpected string of high rolls for a wyrmling's breath weapon, knocking all but one of them unconcious. (Outnumbered by the rest of his enemies, he didn't last until his next turn either.) They still won that encounter with only one fatality. It wasn't because they were invincible.

For a guy who keeps slagging on 4E, R&R, you obviously know nothing about it.

One of the good things about 4E is that players have more freedom to decide how often they want to lose the fight. I remember how often that was dictated to them back in 1/2E adventures, when DMs were actively encouraged to keep players from making progress until the story said it was time to do so. I remember when 3E DMs were always bragging about how well they'd "trained" their players, as though there was some cause for pride in taking such a patronizing attitude.

4E lets you lose a battle without a single attack die being rolled by either side. If a fight is supposed to be hopeless, forcing people to play it out is nearly always a waste of their time. The same is true in cases where you can expect them to slaughter their thousands and tens of thousands. It's boring. The situation can be fun, but only if you take it outside of the combat mechanics. True in OD&D, and true for every edition since then.

That's not to say that 4E players hate to lose encounters run by the combat mechanics either. They'd just prefer for that to mean something more than, "The DM can always find something bigger to throw at us." You can still play as a bunch of Red Shirts, but that's never been the norm in any edition.

Now that depends entirely on the DM, if I make a fight hopeless like say put a group of 6th level adventures against a hydra I expect them to run, however if they come up with a good idea to kill it like say, toppling over a pillar or knocking a boulder down onto the hydra I let them have it, if they somehow succeed then I give them the XP they deserve along with bonus 'Hopeless battle win' XP.

... Sorry, I just really wanted to say that since Pinkie was shouting out secrets XD .

~Besides, I don't have any stories to tell since I've never actually played a tabletop game before (Yet I have such a strong obsession with them XD ). Everything I know comes from D&D-style comics like yours and others~

It's reassuring to know that so many tabletop based webcomics are accessible to people who don't play the games. It's also amusing (or perhaps disconcerting) to realize that the comics tend to be more accessible than the games that inspire them.

I'm fairly certain accessibility of anything considered 'nerd knowledge' is made more accessible by dint of the outsider being given a fairly cherry picked view of what is necessary information. Look at any of the more recent comic book super hero movies... Say, Iron Man. He has comics going back to the 60s (I think) and has built a massive history, but the movies only ever hint at the rest of it, giving the audience only what they need to understand the plot at the time.

I don't play tabletop games either. Well, I played one campaign, but then decided it wasn't for me. But I still enjoy reading tabletop-based comics and I even sat in on a couple of sessions my friends played, just to watch the hilarity (the players are a motley group who never agree on anything, so hilarity always ensues).

In a "Firefly" style Star Trek game, the party was in an intense meeting with the enemy inside a ship hanger. My character was on the ship (because no one cared about me). We were negotiating for a prisoner exchange when the GM pulled the captain aside to a private room for a secret talk about the situation.

While they were gone, I took charge and radio'd the other players that we should totally pretend to mutiny and then all grab the prisoner and run to the ship. I'll fly us out and as we leave, we use our transporter to grab the captain as he serves the role of "meat shield" because he had the best armor.
The players, being the cut-throat backstabbing hobos that they were, agreed.

GM and captain come back to the table and negotiations begin. That's when my character shouted over the radio "CREW MUTINEERS SAY WHAT?" and I fired the ship's tractor beam on full reverse at the enemy BBEG.

The BBEG hit the back wall at about 20G acceleration and splattered. A gunfight started and the other players quickly grabbed the prisoner and jumped aboard. I transported the captain onboard and heldhim in the transporter's buffer for 2 rounds before he could remotely lock me out of the ship controls.
We escaped with only minor injuries.

I have several things to say this morning. Outside the DM's knowledge? Oh, I've heard some interesting things about that. Incidentally, I am back. My family has gone home, and the gun show is over.

That lazy, pompous, stuck up, jackass! I gave him thirty pages of material, and he only posts for one day!? I'm gonna throttle him! I'm going to smack him around with a slab of beef! I WILL POKE HIM WITH A VERY POINTY STICK!

And you! You bastages! You waited until my back is turned, and then you go and have a philosophical debate without me! I love philosophical debates like that! AAARRRGGH!

Also, gun show was awesome. Got a big, sharp knife, found some useful stuff, got a new hat and badass cane. Good times. Wrote a song to share with all of you. The same tune was going through my head both days of the gun show.

What is this place filled with so many gunners
Guns here for sale, and bullets by the hunnerds.
Artisan knives and the cute little squirrel calls,
World War antiques, and pink camo truck balls,
truuuuuck baaaaaaaaalls.

Oh, man, I'm lovin this place,
and I wear a big knife so I can save face.
Yes, my blaze orange hat makes me easy to see,
meeting up is simple, it's strategy!

Yes, I love everythiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing!

Yes, the gun show makes me sing pony songs. And I am proud of that. Also, if you were there, you might have seen me. I was kinda hard to miss. Digo, Sjosten? I wasn't missing. I said I was taking a short leave of absence. A Raxon is never late, nor is he early, he arrives precisely when he means to.

From Lobo, I've learned to avoid debate with people who introduce small arms into a dialogue within seconds (or a paragraph) of opening one.

Welcome back, Raxon. I'm glad to hear that DNR has not met some horrible fate, though perhaps he felt that filling in for you qualified as such. If he could drop in for a quarterly report, however, I'd be grateful. There's an art to what each of you do.

Thank you for singing pony songs in the middle of a gun show. Illegitimi non carborundum, Raxon.

Now that I have read up on the last couple pages of comments, I think DNR might be onto something. Trixie could secretly be Elusive, and Fancypants could be the false head of the guild. And then Fleur could be the one pulling Trixie's strings, And then, unbenownst to anyone, sits a figure, laughing at the ignorant masses. None know or even suspect he is the most powerful pony in Equestria.

All fear him, but none know him. He is the shadow of deceit, the sinister master of the underworld. The greatest mastermind in the world.

No, not Hayseed. Celestia. After all, if she's been a princess for over a thousand years, she probably knows exactly how to find trouble and control it -- possibly by giving it a "safe" outlet. Why not be the secret head of the Thieves' Guild? Nobody, but NOBODY would suspect the Princess herself!

In my Slayers D20 game, we had a running gag about "pay attention checks" which came up whenever a player did something really stupid because they forgot a piece of in-character knowledge. Associated with this was the line "The DM always makes his pay attention checks!"

So I go out of the room for a bathroom break, come back in, sit on the floor and we resume play. But something's not quite right... "Wait! You hid my chair!"

After that I stopped getting to say that the DM always makes his pay attention checks...

Something that happened while the DM was out of the room? ... well probably the best thing, myself and our healbot, er healer, got up, and rearranged the living room, all books, posters, and everything on our table by one inch - leaving his chair in tact... (he was gone for about 15 minutes).
He came back and looked really confused, but didn't say anything. He was really uncomfortable, but couldn't place why he felt that way. He to this day doesn't know.

Okay so Summer camp campaign, We get to the big bad and his pet dragon just as the bell rang so we went to the next activity (technicly the GM was out of the room). We then chatted with every experianced DND player in camp showing them our character sheets and equipment. They came up with a plan to use the bag of devouring I "found", half phase spiders Phase shift

(Dang it hit post by accident and cant edit)
Cont. and the Wizards shrink person spell to
1. Give the phase spider my bag,
2. To shrink him down.
3. Phase shift into the dragon.
4. Find the heart and put the bag of devouring over it.
5. Watch the carnage.
The DM was impressed by our creativity

I haven't done that much when the DM was out of the room. Although that could be because A) when he leaves the room he is one room over with the door open and B) he doesn't trust us enough to leave the room in the middle of a session.

When I left the room, once I came back to find the players had started an all-out, free-for-all brawl to the death amongst each other.

Being the responsible DM I am, my response was to inform everyone that hitting 0 HP in this particular fight instantly took you out, with no negative hit points and no chance of permanent death...and then I offered goodies and gratuitous XP to the winner.

Ok, we were playing D&D 3.5 on a almost epic-level orc campaign (lv 18 + level adjustement) and the GM told us to spend our newest big pile of treasure... as we please. No limit. And that we could make handmade items, following the appropriate rules.

The campaign was made with average players, me being one of the experimented.

The Dm left the room to answer a important call and I told to the player to hand me their character sheet and that I would HANDMADE them items tat would fit their characters, if they wanted. Unfortunatly, only one accepted but the effect on the next session was still good.

Next session, the GM ask us to describe what we gotten... I told him it was a shield with a surface reflecting like a mirror. He thought it was a ordinary Reflecting shield LOL

Next, we face a collossus monster fighting with a chain weapon. Our biggest and baddass character (who wasnt me, unfortunatly) almost got kill in the first round because the GM thought he had the feats to take the thing while he didnt. It was going to be a total party kill but I told him that I would make everything alright on my turn.

I had the worst initiative and not the greatest thread (Dragon Shaman) but I saved the day... as you see, the shield I requested was made a Miror of Opposition. I made a copy of the big bag boss appear and on the second round made appear a other.

The others weren't happy as they didnt do anything... but the GM actually thanked me.

As my allignement was very different from the rest of the group and because of sudden work call, I had to let down that game but I was told the other magic item I created for the other player also saved the day BIG TIME lol

(I earned the nicknamed Puss in Boots in a game after that, I made special boots for a Catfolk that totally were badass LOL)

One time, during a rather bizarre 3.5 campaign that a friend of mine was running (We had an anthro vixen, wasp, and lizard with a Druid that spent most of her time as a weasel), we had a situation where an elf party member got herself in trouble and carted off by the DM (aka guards) and the rest of us just kinda sat there for close to an hour. So we started cooking. The vixen cooked up turkey legs, the wasp made grilled cheese sandwiches, the lizard burnt some fish, and the weasel caught on fire. It was rather hilarious. DM and Elf comeback in to find us laughing our heads off, and we just said "You had to be there." XD

We never got into any kind of discussions or arguments about it since we didn't really shoot for alignments, but the game I was in was a mess.
Two characters that could be called Lawful Good, at least six between Neutral, Chaotic, and Stupid Good.
One or two under Chaotic Neutral to justify them helping us out while allowing them to do horrible things.

And one who could only be described as Chaotic Stupid who tried to be the villain of the game. That didn't work out for them.

In fact, when one of the Lawful Good characters died, he somehow came back as a ghost for the sole purpose to taunt the guy about how stupid it was to try to be the villain. Game got weird.

Okay, I've got one, but this one didn't have bad side-effects, it merely got everyone at the table laughing when the DM came back.

So I played a rogue-alchemist in a pathfinder game once. She was a very young half elf (physically about 12-13-ish) and so I played her like a playful, experimental, open-minded child. She also, however, was the biggest source of actual direction for the party (making most of the decisions, which shockingly enough normally went very well) as well as the biggest source of comedy. We were having a mid-session break and the GM had walked away to get a drink and our characters were doing their nightly routines.

Well, the DM's NPC Dorvic suffered from stereotypical macho dwarf-ness. It was hilarious how straight he intentionally played it, but Aki didn't really like it and decided to give him a playful jab back for all the jabs he'd made at her for being half elf. We were just joking in the room at the time about Dorvic being all "REAL MEN do this! This is how a REAL MAN works!" and so on.

So, I took it a step further and had an image of Aki using up her last elixir of Disguise Self to disguise herself as Dorvic and go stomping down the halls obnoxiously going "REAL MEN REAL MEN REAL MEN REAL MEN!" in a deep, gruff, dwarf voice.

… the DM came back while I was doing Aki's impression of Dorvic, which everyone said was terrifyingly close to the voice our DM was using for Dorvic. The game stopped for 15 minutes while everyone was collapsed in fits of laughter. That joke became canon.

Not entirely sure if Skype games fit the bill, or if this fits the spirit of the idea, but...

What was intended to be our final session, we'd spent a few hours fighting the Big Bad, and eventually managed to beat him. Unfortunately, he'd possessed someone that we reeeally didn't want to die during the final battle, and after it was over he (the someone) was in a bad way, with catastrophic implications for the whole world.

Right at that moment, the Father of All Dragons that we'd been looking for because of his vaunted healing powers showed up. He begins: "You have defeated [the Big Bad]."

(silence)

One of the other players agrees, "Yup, we did."

(silence)

(more silence)

It took us another minute to discover that our GM's connection had dropped right at that instant, at what felt for all the world like a natural pause. He had to restart his computer to be able to reconnect, and since some people were pushing when they had to go we ended up postponing the rest of the events to another, truly final session. He was understandably frustrated with the ordeal, but some of us got a good laugh out of it once we'd figured out what happened.

One is where a player picks an alignment direction because they feel it's a fun concept, and plays the character up to it, rather than just using it as a label. A variant is a more rules-bound player thinking that there really _are_ supposed to be nine rigid archetypes (rather than nine broad categories for spell effect purposes), and playing rigidly to their interpretation of what the rules say. Either way, you get a character being run "by the book". If you have more than one of these, with players with different interpretations of alignment, they can each perceive the other as mis-roleplaying their alignment and argument ensues.

A second is where players aren't deliberately rules-lawyering alignments, but where PCs or NPCs or monsters fall near the grey areas of a given alignment category, and a situation comes up in play where they have to adjudicate spell effects (or other effects) that are alignment-sensitive. Different players (and the DM) may disagree about how the rules should be applied (given that it's a border case), and argument ensues.

A third is when the players just enjoy talking socially during the game (most groups do this to a greater or lesser extent). Conversation topics will be picked from their environment and from recent goings-on and so forth; it's only natural that game-related topics will be folded into that. And for whatever reason, alignment seems to be almost as polarizing as politics or religion when it comes up, among some groups (we usually argue about level and skill mechanics in different systems instead). Argument ensues.

Long story short, it's something where both the rules and the ideas underlying the rules are open to interpretation, and that affects gameplay and character concepts that people are attached to, so people will argue about it.

As well as spell effects, in 3.X certain classes had alignment restrictions. Barbarian, Bard, Cleric, Monk, and Paladin classes would either loose special abilities and/or the ability to gain levels (in that class) if the character's alignment changed.

Basically it starts when a character acts in a way that one of the players or DMs feels is contradictory to that player's alignment. The player in question usually wants to do the action but the alignment ties his or her hands, so an argument starts about whether it's *actually* against the alignment. Things get worse if the player's action would significantly work against another Player's wellbeing (or the DM's adventure).

So you have multiple parties trying to get their way through the alignment system - all with different interpretations of what 'good' is.

It's an amorphous philosophical debate mixed up in self-interest *and* the needs of a story.

That's how alignment debates start.

How they end is rather an open question. Sadly, quite a few groups answer with a groaning, "Never".

So many of these debates could easily be resolved if people just agreed that pattern counts for more than moment, excess has a way of dictating pattern, and creative interpretation deserves some slack. As long as your goal isn't to antagonize the other participants and the creativity is sincere (rather than an attempt to pull a fast one), it can usually work out for the best.

However on the topic of Lies I made a hilarious character in a modified Pathfinder/3.5 game.

So there is a pathfinder rogue talent that lets other people use YOUR bluff skill when they repeat a lie you have told them.

This being a game of overblown singular character traits but relatively low magic I proceeding to make a character that was a bonafide flim flam, tophat and mustache snake oils salesman bard with rogue talents.

His bluff was horrific.

His charisma terrible.

His standard form of income was to pick up some random piece of garbage and proceed to weave a tale of wonder around it, sell/trade it up for something slightly more valuable and then continue in that vein until he had acquired the most concentrated wealth he could manage.

Ironically his sense motive was pretty bad and he often stumbled into highly illegal deals and then proceeded to need to be bailed out by the other characters or make use of a combat stance that let him add his charisma to AC.

We later mused on the character's 'contagious lies' and concluded he probably actually ended up creating net wealth for several days after going on one of his mercantile rampages, oh, also the lies stopped being convincing after a day.

My group normally plays lawful-chaotic as the good-evil (with the definition of how much you care about local rules) where the actual good-evil is more like red team/blu team; vaguely opposing factions, pick whichever you hate least.

Had a session where we were cutting away to a bunch of our previous characters in the same continuity but not directly related to any of the current game. DM calls us into a different room to tell us what they've been up to off-screen. We all just RPed as our old characters shooting the breeze while we waited.

Also, the fallout from that 10-minute RP session is going to turn into its own game once the current one wraps up.

Predicting for next strip: Applejack hesitates with eating because she's unsure whether it would be against her alignment (since one of them has meat - the ham sandwich), or otherwise an impolite gesture to the Princess, or unsure if leaving some of the foods un-eaten would be seen as rude.

That's not the pattern I see. The previous comic was a little short on comments compared to this page (88), but the two before that were 119 and 136 as of this writing. One of those had DefinitelyNotRaxon, the other had no Raxon (though quite a few commenting on the lack of Raxon). And the two before that remain in the mid-60s.

The conclusion I draw is this: The comments fluctuate just about the same way with or without Raxon. Do I think comment numbers and frequency go up with Raxon here? Yes. But I also think that some potential comments, which in another universe would be talking about different things, are converted into Raxon responses. It's a little of both.

The comment section fluctuates up and down from page to page. Raxon might be a factor when it comes to numbers, but if so, it's not really a defining factor with a clear up-or-down meaning. His influences are mainly on what the comments are about more than the sheer number of them.

Also, I am flattered that I apparently have my own class of comment. That's pretty cool. And funny. I stick around because I love this comic. Spud's really an entertaining writer, and probably a great DM. The community you have built here in the comments section is pretty good. Please also note that my posts are often fairly large, with walls of text, broken down into bite sized chunks, so you don't choke on an errant brick.

Masonry must be carefully prepared before consumption. Failure to do so can result in oral complications.

I'm going to go with the null hypothesis, and say that the comment surge this time around is adequately explained by Newbiespud's topic choice prompting at least two alignment debate threads. I'm surprised we've had so _few_ comments (and no flame-fests yet), given that.

While I may not have a story about something that happened when the DM was out of the room (I normally DM, and they never tell me nothin'...), I have a story from when about half the players were!

We were starting to get tired of Rappan Athuk and I was getting burnt out of GMing, so we decided to try something different. New characters, classes we hadn't ever played before, stuff like that. We TPK'd within a week.

The paladin was suicidal, the oracle was a greedy bastard, the druid was too stupid to prepare healing spells, the magus was just terrible, the sorcerer thought he was a fighter, the barbarian wasn't hitting shit because he was two weapon fighting, and the wizard (me) actually could've gone places. The rogue was a great rogue, it's just nobody (me included) was letting him do his job.

I can't remember anything particularly funny happening when a DM left a room, but I have seen a pretty hilarious/terrible incident when a player left the room.

I was playing in a fairly high level D&D 3.5 campaign with my roommate, where we were playing twin half silver dragons, him a fighter and me a paladin (my previous character in the game had been a pixie paladin XD ). We were up against a really nasty Half-Etten/Half Green Dragon thing that was doing a number on us. My roommate got hit with enough damage that he needed to make a fort save to stay up, and he succeeded.

After making his save he decided to go and use the restroom, as there were still like 7 other players that needed to take their turns. While he is gone, the Etten goes into a rage and has to attack the nearest standing enemy. Since all the other melee were knocked out, this meant that he had to attack my roommate. And proceeded to paste him.

About a minute later my roommate comes back and his character is dead. All because he succeeded a saving throw.

Egads, alignments. I always tell my players the same thing, over and over: don't get hung up on alignments.

You're not supposed to play your alignment. You're supposed to play your character, who has motivations and opinions that should roughly be in line with your alignment, but doesn't always have to be.

For example, a chaotic neutral character who was fervently loyal to a secret society. You'd think lawful would work better, but as far as she cared, mundane laws regarding anything besides the society were worthless. In other words, CN. In another game I played a chaotic evil character who was violently opposed to slavery. The GM kinda forgot that bit, so when he introduced a group of slavers with the expectation that we (an evil group) would be cooperating with them for mutual profit, I slaughtered them. He was very surprised.

And when I GM, I make it clear that you will not be treated according to your alignment, rather you will be treated according to your actions, which may be affected by your alignment if you so choose. The streets are not patrolled by paladins with 24/7 Detect Evil going, but doing evil and/or illegal acts where people can see you will have repercussions.

Hilariously, I did have one paladin player who failed to understand this, and thought that his class had legal permission to slay evil wherever he found it without any negative repercussions. He was dragged away by the city guard after he struck down an old fishmonger lady in the market place. Yes, she was evil and nasty, and had done plenty of petty and unpleasant things in her life, but nothing directly illegal to the point of warranting her death. So he was arrested for murder, and Fell, and had no idea why. Man was he pissed.

Late to the party, but I actually have a short story for this.
In HighSchool I joined RP club with a bunch of friends, one room had D&D (which I figured was too complicated for my tastes) and the room next door had Paranoia. In senior year my friend K was elected club leader and GM. She hated leaving the room because the players were constantly trying to kill and/or betray each other simply because they thought it was funny and had unlimited clones. She had to start enforcing the 'you have 6 clones' rule because she'd come back frm the bathroom to find me and the 3 other players there for the story alive, and the 5 guys who found infighting funny declaring that they died twice in the time she was gone.